Upanishads

When he (the Highest Self) is in union with the body, the senses, and the mind, then wise people call him the Enjoyer.

The Upanishads are a collection of religious texts, written in Sanskrit and forming part of the Hindu scriptures. They were written between the 8th and 6th centuries BC, though the name Upanishad is sometimes also extended to cover many later writings on the Vedanta philosophy.

Know the Self to be sitting in the chariot, the body to be the chariot, the intellect (buddhi) the charioteer, and the mind the reins. The senses they call the horses, the objects of the senses their roads. When he (the Highest Self) is in union with the body, the senses, and the mind, then wise people call him the Enjoyer.

As large as this ether (all space) is, so large is that ether within the heart. Both heaven and earth are contained within it, both fire and air, both sun and moon, both lightning and stars; and whatever there is of him (the Self) here in the world, and whatever is not (i. e. whatever has been or will be), all that is contained within it.

You are what your deep, driving desire isAs your desire is, so is your will As your will is, so is your deedAs your deed is, so is your destiny

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 4.4.5

When the speech of this dead person enters into the fire, breath into the air, the eye into the sun, the mind into the moon, the hearing into space, into the earth the body, into the ether the self, into the shrubs the hairs of the body, into the trees the hairs of the head, when the blood and the seed are deposited in the water, where is then that person?

That which is not uttered by speech, that by which the word is expressed, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped. That which one does not think with the mind, that by which, they say, the mind is thought, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped. That which man does not see with the eye, that by which man sees the activities of the eye, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped. That which man does not hear with the ear, that by which man hears the ear’s hearing, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped. That which man does not smell with the organ of smell, that by which the organ of smell is attracted towards its objects, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped.

Knowledge of the Divine dissolves all bonds, and gives freedom from every kind of misery including birth and death. S'vetasvataropanishad.

(Ramacharka, 1907, The spirit of the Upanishads, Cosmo Classics, New York, p. 8)

Mind being nearest mind, those who abandoning the true secret, apply themselves only to the body, are described as lost in physical attachment. Yogavasishtha.

(Ramacharka, 1907, The spirit of the Upanishads, Cosmo Classics, New York, p. 58)

You may drink the ocean dry; you may uproot from its base the mountain Meru; you may swallow fire. But more diffucult than all these, oh Good One! is control over the mind. Panchadasi.

Ramacharka, 1907, The spirit of the Upanishads, Cosmo Classics, New York, p. 45)

The light breaking upon the mind should not be excluded by that false logic which puts forth unholy guesses of every kind up to the obliteration even of the facts of consciousness. Yogavasishtha.

(Ramacharka, 1907, The spirit of the Upanishads, Cosmo Classics, New York, p. 22)

Trees continue to vegetate, and so do live on beasts and birds; he alone lives whose mind lives not in consequence of taking on a variety of forms. All holy writ is so much burden to him who has not acquired self-control, the body is so much burden to him who knows only the anatman (no-self.)

The view of things … that all plurality is only apparent, that in the endless series of individuals, passing simultaneously and successively into and out of life, generation after generation, age after age, there is but one and the same entity really existing, which is present and identical in all alike; — this theory … may be carried back to the remotest antiquity. It is the alpha and omega of the oldest book in the world, the sacred Vedas, whose dogmatic part, or rather esoteric teaching, is found in the Upanishads. There, in almost every page this profound doctrine lies enshrined; with tireless repetition, in countless adaptations, by many varied parables and similes it is expounded and inculcated.

From every sentence deep original and sublime thoughts arise, and a high and holy and earnest spirit pervades the whole. In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads…

Arthur Schopenhauer, quoted in A Look at India From the Views of Other Scholars, by Stephen Knapp [7], quoted in Schopenhauer on Self, World and Morality: Vedantic and Non-Vedantic Perspectives by A. Barua.